8 h. ago Does Nayib Bukele’s campaign against democracy give a blueprint for Trump?

El Salvador’s populist leader extols a hardline approach to crime and an assault on civil society – drawing envy from many in the Trump administration“I have no doubt the government are watching,” said Ingrid Escobar, an activist lawyer who has proved a thorn in the side of El Salvador’s authorities. “There are cars that follow me – I have them identified.”Since president Nayib Bukele launched a sweeping crackdown on gangs, Escobar has advocated for the tens of thousands locked up without due process. She points to a photo of Geovanni Aguirre, a childhood friend and trade unionist who worked in San Salvador’s mayor’s office. He disappeared into the prison system in 2022. Continue reading...

Politics

18 h. ago El Salvador president orders arrest of of bus company heads for defying free transport order

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has ordered police via social media to arrest five heads of bus companies in the Central American country after they defied his order to offer free transport for a week due to a highway closure

Politics

4 d. ago Trump unveils 2026 budget blueprint that includes deep cuts to non

Proposed budget would raise defense spending by 13% and homeland security spending by nearly 65% compared to 2025 levelsThe seeds were sown for yesterday’s ousting of Mike Waltz as national security adviser long before “Signalgate”, notes Politco.The outlet reports that his approach to the job was unpopular and Waltz was seen as too cocky. One person close to the White House said:He’s a staff, but he was acting like a principal.Waltz has been on thin ice for a while. [Signalgate] made the ice thinner but at the same time may actually save him for now because they don’t want to give [Jeffrey] Goldberg a scalp. Continue reading...

Politics

4 d. ago Trump 100 days: White House action plan makes Project 2025 look mild

Donald Trump tried to distance himself from the radical rightwing blueprint for government during the campaign but its prescriptions are all over the administration’s agendaTrump’s whirlwind start to his second presidencyWhen Donald Trump chose a Project 2025 author to lead a key federal agency that would carry out the underpinnings of the conservative manifesto’s aims, he solidified the project’s role in his second term.Shortly after he won re-election, the US president nominated Russ Vought to lead the office of management and budget. Vought wrote a chapter for Project 2025 about consolidating power in the executive branch and advances a theory that allows the president to withhold funds from agencies, even if Congress has allocated them. Consolidating power, in part through firing a supposed “deep state” and hiring loyalists, is a major plank of the project – and of Trump’s first 100 days. Continue reading...

Politics

5 d. ago Trump says he can 'bring back' man accidentally deported to torture prison

President Donald Trump has refused to make the call to El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele to discuss returning Kilmar Abrego Garcia after he was wrongly deported due to being 'an MS-13 gang member'

Events

5 d. ago Even El Salvador’s president questioned Trump team on if migrants being sent were actually gang members: report

El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele privately ‘expressed concern’ about who the Trump administration sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, according to the report

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1 week ago Families of detainees in El Salvador and Venezuela decry Bukele’s prisoner swap offer

Salvadorian president denounced as ‘tyrannical’ as he floats trading 252 prisoners with fellow authoritarian regimeThe families of prisoners being held by the authoritarian governments of El Salvador and Venezuela have condemned President Nayib Bukele’s offer to swap 252 Venezuelan detainees sent to his jails by the Trump administration for the same number of political prisoners incarcerated by Nicolás Maduro’s regime.Nelson Suárez, whose brother was among the Venezuelan immigrants sent from the US to a notorious maximum-security jail in El Salvador last month, said he was desperate for the release of his brother, from whom he has heard nothing in five weeks. Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago Venezuela accuses El Salvador of human trafficking as prisoners caught in row between authoritarians

Nayib Bukele offered to exchange 252 Venezuelan migrants deported to El Salvador for 252 prisoners in VenezuelaVenezuela’s chief prosecutor has accused El Salvador’s president of being a “tyrannical” human trafficker after Nayib Bukele offered to exchange the 252 Venezuelan migrants deported to his country’s prisons by Donald Trump for the same number of political prisoners in Venezuela.Bukele made the offer on Sunday night in a message addressed directly to his authoritarian counterpart Nicolás Maduro. “I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that includes the repatriation of 100% of the 252 Venezuelans who were deported, in exchange for the release and delivery of an identical number of the thousands of political prisoners that you hold,” El Salvador’s leader posted. Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago Salvadoran President Bukele proposes prisoner swap with Maduro for Venezuelan deportees

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the United States his government has kept imprisoned for who he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela

Events

2 w. ago Trump has found in El Salvador a model for the repressive state he wants to build – and he’s just getting started | Jordana Timerman

Nayib Bukele has shown how brutal control can be sustained not just through force, but by raising the cost of speaking outThe Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) maximum security prison in El Salvador is the crown jewel of President Nayib Bukele’s efforts to quash not only criminal gangs, but also criticism and political opposition to his government. The “mega-prison” is also one of the more visible destinations in the emerging map of American deportations – a sprawling archipelago that includes conservative US districts, the Guantánamo military base and Central American waypoints connected by a tangle of military and charter flights.That the two states have connected their penal architecture is no coincidence. Donald Trump’s aggressive policies towards foreigners build on Bukele’s infamous iron fist crackdown against criminal gangs: it’s a political toolkit that leverages anti-establishment anger to justify an authoritarian slide. In deploying strongman tactics to address social c...

Politics

2 w. ago Kilmar Ábrego García ‘traumatized’ by threats in prison, Maryland senator says

Chris Van Hollen describes meeting with constituent held in Salvadoran prison against supreme court orderUS politics live – latest updatesWrongly deported Salvadoran man Kilmar Ábrego García has been held incommunicado and faced threats in prison that left him “traumatized”, a Democratic senator said Friday after returning from meeting him in El Salvador.Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the state Ábrego García had been living in with his US citizen wife and son until he was deported last month in what the Trump administration conceded was an “administrative error”, traveled to the central American country this week to see his constituent. After initially rejecting his request to meet Ábrego García and preventing him from traveling to the prison where he was being held, president Nayib Bukele’s government on Thursday facilitated a meeting at Van Hollen’s hotel. Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago Tropical drinks by the pool? Not so fast, says senator who visited Abrego Garcia in El Salvador

There was the pool furniture in the background

Politics

2 w. ago Democratic senator meets with Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador

Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele says wrongfully deported Maryland dad has the ‘honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody’

Politics

2 w. ago El Salvador's president says notorious megaprison will double in size to hold Trump's 'homegrown' deportees

El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele plans to double the size of the notorious megaprison where the country is holding migrants that President Donald Trump deported.

Politics

2 w. ago Trump’s gilded Oval Office was the perfect setting for his and Bukele’s grotesque spectacle | Julia Carrie Wong

The president’s penchant for the gaudy has been mocked but the menace beneath was clear when he met El Salvador’s leaderThe Oval Office meeting of Donald Trump and Nayib Bukele on Monday was a grotesque spectacle. Both men, elected to lead nominally democratic countries, have described themselves as dictators, and they exuded that sense of smug impunity. While reporters sought answers on the fate of Kilmar Ábrego García, a 29-year-old father of three who was wrongly deported to El Salvador’s notorious Cecot mega-prison, Trump and Bukele disclaimed responsibility, joked about further deportations, and engaged in casual slander of Ábrego García, who is not, and has never been alleged to be, a terrorist.And then there was the gold. So much gold. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago What happens next after judge warns of possible contempt prosecution over deportation flights order

A federal judge’s ruling that the Trump administration appears to have willfully violated his order to turn around planes of migrants headed for El Salvador increases the prospect of officials being held in criminal contempt of court and potentially facing possible prosecution

Events

2 w. ago Judge finds cause to hold Trump administration in criminal contempt for violating deportation order

A federal judge says he's found probable cause to hold the Trump administration in criminal contempt of court for violating his orders to turn around planes carrying deportees to El Salvador

Events

2 w. ago Judge rebukes Trump officials for not securing return of wrongly deported man

Administration will have to share under oath how it’s trying to get Kilmar Ábrego García back to US, says district judgeA federal judge sharply rebuked the Trump administration and scolded officials on Tuesday for taking no steps to secure the return of a man wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, as the US supreme court had ordered in a contentious ruling last week.The US district judge Paula Xinis said that Donald Trump’s news conference with El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, where the leaders joked that Kilmar Ábrego García would not be released, did not count as compliance. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Attorney general dodges question on Trump proposal to jail US citizens in El Salvador

Trump proposed that ‘homegrown criminals’ should be deported, an idea that experts say is clearly illegalThe US attorney general declined on Tuesday to say whether Donald Trump’s suggestion of removing US citizens to El Salvador was legal, in alarming remarks about what experts think is an obviously illegal idea.Trump proposed the idea on Monday in the Oval Office during a visit with El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, who has been accepting people deported from the US and imprisoning them in a gigantic facility notorious for human rights abuses. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Donald Trump tells El Salvador president to build more prisons for American criminals as 'home growns are next'

During a meeting with President Nayib Bukele on Monday Donald Trump urged him to build more jails as he wanted "to go a step further" and start sending American criminals to to Salvadoran prisons

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